Nature abhors a vacuum. So after you are dead the only thing that can happen is the same experience, or the same sort of experience as when you were born. In other words we all know very well that after people die, other people are born. And they’re all you. Only you could only experience it one at a time. Everybody is “I”. You all know you’re you. And wheresoever beings exist throughout all galaxies – it doesn’t make any difference – you are all of them. And when they come into being, that’s you coming into being. You know that very well only you don’t have to remember the past in the same way you don’t have to think about how you work your thyroid gland …. You don’t have to know how to shine the Sun. You just do it. Like you breathe. Doesn’t it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing? And that you are doing all of this and you never had any education in how to do it?

Rian recently wrote a great post titled “Being” which speaks to a couple things I’m experiencing these days. One of the themes he touches on is the positive side of smallness. One aspect he writes about is the size of your online social network:

All of this to say that we’ll do well to remember that the web is people all the way down. And that smaller networks mean more meaningful relationships.

… and being a small fish in a big pond:

When I lived in South Africa I thought what I wanted was to become an author and conference speaker. It was a bit easier there because there aren’t as many UX people as there are elsewhere in the world. And when I decided to move back to the US several people didn’t understand. “You’ll be a small fish in a big pond,” they said. “I know,” I would answer, “isn’t that awesome?”

The small fish bit appeals to me at this point in my life. Working to be the big fish is exhausting and there is always a younger, more energetic fish swimming further and faster. Just keeping up becomes a very unhealthy obsession. I think Rian has the right idea about this (and other aspects of being).